CHROMOSOME ANALYSIS IN PLEURAL EFFUSIONS - EFFICIENCY OF THIS METHOD IN THE DIFFERENTIAL-DIAGNOSIS OF PLEURAL EFFUSIONS

Various laboratory methods are being used to acquire diagnosis in pleu ral effusions. However, about 20% of the effusions cannot be diagnosed reliably. Cytogenetic analysis in pleural effusion is not used routin ely, although many numerical and/or structural chromosome abnormalitie s have been observed in malignant pleural effusions. In this study, a total of the 61 pleural effusion samples, 34 malignant which included 19 diffuse pleural malignant mesothelioma, 15 metastatic malignant ple ural effusions and 27 benign, were analyzed by direct chromosome analy sis method. To the findings obtained in the study, 85.3% (29/34) of th e 34 patients with malignant pleural effusion had numerical and/or str uctural abnormalities, and 3 of them had no mitosis. The patients who had benign pleural effusion indicated no numerical and/or structural a bnormalities. We have concluded that if a pleural effusion cannot be r eliably differentiated by the usual laboratory methods and especially malignancy is strongly suspected, cytogenetic analysis can be used to differentiate malignant effusions from benign effusions with a small r ate of error, and also it can indicate that more invasive diagnostic p rocedures are necessary.